


In The Shadow

by WahlBuilder



Series: 30 days of rarepairs [14]
Category: Mars: War Logs
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Banter, Face-Sitting, Hand Jobs, Hook-Up, Identity Reveal, M/M, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 21:27:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15649254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: It was supposed to be a simple hook-up, but Tenacity's companion is a mystery, and Tenacity's whole life is uncovering mysteries and finding those who don't want to be found.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I know that the canon is _already_ cyberpunk, but this is like. Neon-glow/Deus Ex kind of cyberpunk.

The beat of the club is throbbing in Tenacity’s gut, and usually he would be leaving by now, the bass too much for one night, but now he hardly cares, hardly listens to it.

The beat is vibrating through the body he pushes to the wall, too.

It’s not the bathroom, oh no: Tenacity Williams doesn’t have quick hook-ups in bathroom stalls. (He doesn’t have them when he’s on the hunt either, but that self-imposed rule doesn’t deign to visit his mind right now.) It’s a private room over the dance floor that he rents from Charity for a hefty sum. Everyone he usually hunts goes through Charity’s establishments, and sometimes he just needs a bustling place to crush on.

Or to have a fuck.

The room is small, probably used to be a broom closet, but it has a bunk and a tiny bathroom, and what more does he need, really.

The lights are automatic, brighter than the strobe nightmare of the dance floor, and in this light, the guy he’s pressing into the wall looks... younger, but still ambiguously aged. Damn it.

And his eyes. By the Shadow, his _eyes_ : one dark gold, the other blue of the sunrise. It was the eyes that Tenacity noticed back down, though not exactly the colour. Just the gaze, intense, a million-watt gaze. Otherwise the guy is handsome, but nothing exceptional: average built, a worn jacket without identifying patches, an undercut growing out, a few days worth of stubble.

Two parallel notches on both temples. Tenacity rubs a pad of his thumb over one of them. Connectors, they are. A cyber fan. Tenacity wonders what kind of implants he has and what sum he paid for them.

‘Are we going to do anything? Maybe this week?’

Mouthy, too.

Something about him sets Tenacity on edge, makes his senses go into overdrive. Not unlike during a hunt, but this guy is decidedly not prey.

He’s a hunter, too.

This is a bad, bad idea in so many ways.

Tenacity grins, keeping a hand pressed to the guy’s chest. ‘Maybe even tonight. I’m feeling generous.’

The man rolls his striking eyes. ‘Oh joy. I’m very lucky, then.’

Tenacity chuckles. He’s slightly taller than this mouthy bastard, and he bends to nuzzle under his jaw. The guy smells of metal and electricity. Definitely a cyber crank. ‘Yeah. Lucky.’ He nudges the collar away to taste a patch of skin—and the guy makes an impatient noise, but for all that talk he doesn’t try to push Tenacity away.

Tenacity contemplates teasing him for a while—when suddenly a hand slides into his hair and _pulls_ , away from that neck, and his lips are being crushed in a biting kiss.

Tenacity hisses from pain, fingers twisting the front of the guy’s jacket. ‘The fuck is this?’ His heart is racing, adrenaline spiking. Oh yes, this is a mutual hunt. What he thought would be just a quick unmemorable fuck is promising to turn into something spicy.

‘Maybe we could move it to the bed that’s _right behind you_?’

Oh yes. Yes, it’s going to be glorious.

Tenacity smiles lazily, taking the opportunity to stroke the dip between the clavicles. ‘Maybe. I’m quite comfortable here, though. What’s your name?’

‘Roy. Yours?’

Oh, doesn’t even pause. Tenacity doubts it’s a real name, though, but for a change from the familiar virtue thing, it’s nice, too. He doesn’t reply immediately himself, strokes this very nice, hard chest down to the hips. Hooks his thumb through a belt loop. ‘Williams.’

‘Williams,’ the guy echoes flatly. ‘Really.’

‘You’d be surprised.’ He doesn’t want to hurry this. For once, he wants to indulge in it, and so he continues his lazy exploration even though there’s still a hand in his hair. He likes it, actually. The promise of stinging pain and struggle for dominance.

He brushes his lips over Roy’s chin, the stubble wonderfully scratchy, making his freshly-bitten lips ache, then he presses a wet, full kiss to Roy’s mouth, sliding his tongue between his lips, and tastes blood. The hand in his hair cups his head and brings them closer into the kiss. It is dirty and indeed unhurried, and Roy’s breathing grows heavier, his chest rising and falling, and Tenacity presses closer, sliding a knee between his legs.

‘Your lips are bleeding,’ Roy murmurs, breaking the kiss.

Tenacity pulls back just enough to lick his own lips. Yeah, definitely.

‘I’m sorry.’

Oh Shadow, he’s wonderful, and his eyes are so serious.

‘I’ll live,’ Tenacity promises, and doesn’t make it light. But he does grin as he says, ‘You said something about bed?’

A frown suits Roy well, too, and a snarl, and that thing when he bares his lips like a hound, threatening. All teeth. He grabs the front of Tenacity’s shirt and twists them around, slamming him into the wall.

It aggravates the massive bruise on his left shoulder—a reminder of his previous hunt. But it only makes him smile at Roy’s eagerness. ‘Why such a hurry? We have all night.’

‘Yeah, and you keep stalling.’ There is something of a challenge here, and Tenacity wants to be contrarian. Slow to Roy’s fast, tender to his blazing fierceness—but that _I’m sorry_ stays in his mind. This is a game and not a game at the same time, and frankly, he should be leaving right the fuck now. He doesn’t need this. A quick fuck, that’s all it’s supposed to be, and if it promises to be something else, he better stop.

He doesn’t stop.

And Roy seems to be in a real hurry, or maybe a feigned hurry, because he rolls his eyes—as though he can hear all of Tenacity’s thoughts—and drops to his knees. ‘By the wall it is, then.’

Tenacity grins down at him, spreading his legs slightly. ‘I have no complaints so far.’

Roy mutters something suspiciously like ‘prick’, but since he’s working on Tenacity’s belt and trousers, Tenacity isn’t complaining either.

He cards his fingers through the strands of dirty-brown hair—and Roy flinches away. Kissing is fine, and _Sorry_ is fine, but not this? All right. Tenacity presses his palms to the wall behind himself. He can only try to not touch Roy. The sight of Roy freeing his already leaking cock is good enough to make him bite his abused lip.

And then Roy looks up. And closes his mouth on him.

Tenacity throws his head back and hits it against the wall.

He can not look, all right, but he can’t escape other sensations: the heat of Roy’s mouth and the hint of teeth that does nothing but make the room tilt around Tenacity. It isn’t supposed to be like this.

He doesn’t give a fuck.

Roy, however, does, and what a fuck it is. He sucks like his life depends on him bringing Tenacity off in the next minute. It’s just this side of wrong: too fast, too hard, too much—and then he deepthroats him and doesn’t even gag, and Tenacity claws at the plastered wall and locks his knees to keep himself upright.

He wants to rock into that mouth, that throat, but he isn’t sure he wouldn’t lose it entirely if he tried, so he holds onto his self-control like he never did in his whole life, and lets it just happen to him.

His shoulder is killing him, and the need to take back just a sliver of control over the situation is killing him, and something like barbed wire is wrapped around his spine, and there is a hand pressed to his hip, holding him in place, and he wants to curl up around it. His eyelids ache from how tightly he’s squeezing them shut, and he dares to grip Roy’s shoulder and push slightly.

And dares to look down, and well, that nearly shatters him, because Roy’s eyes are blazing with fury and his lips are swollen and shiny and curled around the head of his cock, Shadow, he’s beautiful, Tenacity wants to keep him for the next forever or two.

‘Stop, stop,’ he rasps, and his voice is drier than he thought it would be.

Roy sits back. ‘Why stop? What did I do wrong?’

He sounds so _wounded_ , Shadow, who did this to you and what kind of bullet do you want me to shoot into them, Tenacity thinks.

‘Nothing’s wrong, you did good, very good, just...’ He gestures vaguely. His hands are shaking. ‘The bed?’

The disbelief doesn’t disappear immediately from Roy’s face, and Tenacity is very tempted to show him his collection of guns and let him choose whatever those fuckers who did this to him would be shot with.

Tenacity shrugs off his jacket because he starts feeling ridiculously overdressed. That gets Roy’s attention away from whatever paranoid vid is playing in his head, and he rises to his feet, his gaze running over Tenacity’s torso.

There are guys who don’t like scars, and to each their own, Tenacity doesn’t begrudge them that. He has preferences of his own.

Roy doesn’t look like he’s disturbed by the scars in the slightest.

Tenacity smiles and nods at him. ‘You?’

Roy shakes himself and starts peeling off his jacket. It’s the most ungraceful undressing ever, and he gets stuck in the left sleeve, and Tenacity has to come to the rescue. Then Tenacity pulls the undershirt off of him, a rather patched thing just like the jacket...

And _stares_.

‘What’ve you been through, a meat grinder?’ he hears himself say, and looks up quickly, hoping he didn’t offend Roy.

Roy doesn’t look offended. ‘And you? Got chewed by hounds?’ That challenge is back in his voice. Good.

Tenacity smirks. ‘Something like that.’ He reaches out and waits, looking at Roy. Roy gives the smallest of nods, and Tenacity runs his fingers through the terrible gnarled scar on Roy’s right shoulder, running onto his chest. There are strange knots at nearly even intervals along the scar. As though he was whipped with barbed wire.

By the Shadow.

Roy’s breathing is shallow, his body tense, muscles flexing in his arms, but he doesn’t move away, and Tenacity takes it as a permission to continue exploration.

There is another scar on the left side, just under the clavicle, big and round, and Tenacity would have said it was from a bullet, except that a bullet of that calibre would have killed Roy. There are strange spidery lines running from it in every direction.

It’s not even _all_. There are horizontal scars just under Roy’s pecs. Tenacity pays them no heed: he’s seen similar on other guys, no mystery here. Then, the scar on his left hip just over the waistband of his trousers, wrapped around his abdomen, too. It looks uneven. It looks _painful_ , even though it’s old enough to be just a jagged white line.

Tenacity slides his palms up Roy’s chest again, the short dark hairs growing in patches because of all the scarring, and then across his shoulders, to his arms. The skin of his forearms gleams in the light, as though covered in gold dust, and at least the reason for those, Tenacity can tell. A cyber crank all the way, playing with electricity. By the Shadow.

He looks up and sees that Roy is watching him. There is something like resignation in those eyes.

Tenacity offers him a smile. ‘I like what I see.’

‘Do you think flattery would get you somewhere?’ But that resignation melts away.

Tenacity laughs. ‘It usually does. Now,’ he steps forward, and Roy moves back and hits the bed with the back of his legs. The room is really not very big. ‘Now, whatever are we going to do?’

Roy puts a hand on the back of his neck, and sits down and pulls Tenacity with him, and Tenacity is only happy to follow. ‘Stop talking, for one,’ Roy murmurs before kissing him again with bruising force.

Tenacity’s eyes close on their own and he puts a knee on the bed, pressing onto Roy’s shoulders. Roy follows the clue, lying down, and Tenacity moves over him, kneeling and propped on his elbows, without breaking the kiss. Thinking how glorious it would be to spar with Roy, if he can even fight. Maybe take him along on the next hunt. He doubts the guy can fight properly. All the more reason to teach him. Can’t rely on cybernetics for everything.

‘By the Shadow, you are gorgeous,’ Tenacity can’t hold back a moan when he breaks the kiss and sits back, straddling Roy’s legs, to admire the sight of him. To run his hands down his chest again. He can even entertain a thought of learning the story behind all these scars. What a silly thought. In the morning, all of it will be just a pleasant memory, nothing more.

Roy frowns again. ‘What did I say about talking?’

Tenacity smiles and looks right into his eyes and says, ‘I want to taste you.’

That renders _Roy_ silent very efficiently.

Tenacity doesn’t see the reason to censor himself: they are here and they both know what they are here for, and he wants Roy to know exactly what he has in mind, to be able to decide whether he wants it himself or not.

Roy wets his lips, and Tenacity suddenly notices that there’s a small scar on his chin, too. ‘Okay.’ He sounds rather breathless.

Tenacity’s smile grows wider. He can’t help himself. ‘ _Okay_. It will be more than _okay_ , pal.’

‘Big words.’

Mouthy, mouthy, mouthy. Tenacity likes it more than he should.

He slides down onto the floor and Roy moves up the bed. His chest is flushed, and Tenacity finds it handsome, too. Roy works quick on his trousers while Tenacity removes his own. There is more of that gleaming skin: his thighs and his calves, and at this point Tenacity is distantly concerned for Roy’s past. He shouldn’t be—but he’s not made of stone.

He pushes these thoughts away: he has no right for them, and certainly not for voicing them or acting on them. Instead, he runs his palms down all that skin. The bed is too small to get on it for what he has in mind, and his knees will be killing him in the morning, but he’s fucked anyway, so he plants one knee on the floor and the other at the foot of the bed. Roy’s femoral pulse is strong and heavy when he presses his fingers to it, and Tenacity, seized by a moment of sentimentality, plants a kiss to it, too—which results in a little squirm. He makes a mirroring kiss on the other thigh, just for symmetry.

‘Not in any hurry at all, aren’t you,’ sounds from the bed.

‘Are _you_ in a hurry?’ Tenacity asks back, but he isn’t exactly expecting an answer because he can see for himself how wet Roy is. It’s not that Tenacity is any better, having been brought to the brink of orgasm but not further. All part of the game, though. Sometimes the fun is in the quick-and-dirty, but he doesn’t want it like this tonight.

He bends lower—and groans in frustration at the burning pain in his shoulder.

‘What’s wrong?’ Roy is looking down at him, rising on his elbow.

Tenacity pats his thigh. ‘Can’t do it like this, we’re going to end up on the floor. Let’s rearrange.’

‘How?’

Oh Shadow.

Tenacity strokes the scar running across Roy’s abdomen, realising that he tries to calm him with touch like he’d do with his hounds. It’s a funny thought. Roy seems to be more of a cat.

‘I lie down,’ Tenacity explains, ‘and you sit on my face.’

A beat of silence—and then the whole of Roy’s face all but glows with colour.

Tenacity grins. Oh Shadow. ‘Good idea?’

Roy looks away briefly, then back at him again. ‘Yeah. Yeah, reasonable.’

Tenacity licks his lips. They rearrange themselves not without a tangle of limbs and bumping into each other, and Tenacity uses it as an excuse to sneak a few kisses, which delay them that bit further. By the Shadow, he’s bad at this. Should have been just a quick fuck—but truth is, he doesn’t want it to be.

He lies down on the bed, and Roy kneels over him, and there is tension in his thighs and Tenacity imagines it’s not entirely a comfortable stretch: he is broad. He runs his hands down Roy’s chest again, can’t keep his hands to himself. He tells himself he’s _not_ doing it to memorise all those scars.

He urges Roy further up the bed, and Roy looks down at him with bright eyes and colour still high on his cheeks.

Tenacity doesn’t close his eyes when he drags his tongue over him for the first time—and he’s glad he didn’t because he’s rewarded with the sight of Roy throwing his head back and arching up. Tenacity smiles, the taste sweet in his mouth, and splays his fingers on the backs of Roy’s thighs for leverage. Roy curls over him, a hand on the bed by his head, and he’s biting his lips and that’s good, too.

Tenacity closes his eyes, and gets to the task at hand. Never has it been said that he’s not diligent.

Roy is quiet except for an occasional sharp inhale, but Tenacity isn’t disappointed: he can feel Roy’s reactions in other ways, and take pleasure in them. Before long, Roy is rocking slightly, and Tenacity lets the rhythm of that small movement guide him. He forgot to ask about penetration, so he doesn’t attempt it, and when Roy inclines forward that bit more, Tenacity turns his attention to the offered part of him. He sucks gently, rhythmically, and flicks his tongue over it, and he doesn’t need to see to know when Roy is close: his thighs are flexing under his hands and Roy lets out the softest moans on every exhale.

Tenacity applies more pressure with his tongue as Roy’s rhythm falters—and then he goes still save for the quiver in his thighs, and Tenacity doesn’t stop licking him until Roy’s breathing returns and he moves away.

Tenacity opens his eyes, and oh, isn’t Roy a wonderful sight, all the scars contrasting on the backdrop of flushed skin, beads of sweat on his shoulders. Tenacity wants to taste him all over.

Roy flops beside him, eyelids fluttering, breathing uneven but deepening and slowing.

Tenacity reaches down between his legs, curls his fingers on his cock—and the touch is almost too much. He has nearly forgotten he’s been hard for so long. But there is no need to rush this either. He runs fingers over his length lazily, eyeing Roy, licking his taste off his lips, until he can keep his eyes open no longer— He jerks when another hand, Roy’s hand, closes on his cock.

‘Don’t have to,’ he manages. The bed is too narrow, and he presses his forehead to Roy’s chest, the big round scar just under his lips.

‘I want to,’ comes the reply, Roy’s fingers picking up the rhythm just like Tenacity did before.

It doesn’t take long at all.

As they regain their breathing, Tenacity becomes aware of his whole body: the burning pain in his shoulder distant, but his jaws are aching, and he is sticky. He doesn’t care now. There is a steady heartbeat under his ear. Tenacity throws an arm around Roy’s narrow waist, thumbs yet another scar. No, not a meat grinder. Something else, something worse.

He has no right to ask.

‘Shower?’ Roy is stroking his back, and at least he is in no danger to fall off the bed, unlike Tenacity. Won’t be the first time, damn it.

‘Later,’ he manages, already being pulled under. ‘Sleep.’ But Tenacity himself is out before he hears any response.


	2. Chapter 2

He wakes up to the rustling of clothes. Nothing new here, but somehow the thought of Roy leaving like this stings. Roy must have turned the lights off some time in the night.

Tenacity cracks open one eye. It’s still early enough that only the cerulean of the lights outside sneaks into the room, painting it in stripes. Tenacity looks for his companion. Roy is not dressed.

The knot in Tenacity’s chest untangles.

Roy is moving quietly in the tiny room, picking their clothes. Puts Tenacity’s trousers and jacket on the small stool kicked to the far wall, pulls on his own trousers. Picks up his jacket and rummages for something in the pockets, then frowns and looks down on the floor. Reaches into the jacket again, crouches. He has a handsome back.

Finally he finds whatever he’s been looking for on the floor, and he gets up. Holding it.

Tenacity feels like a bucketful of ice water has been thrown right to him.

He fucked a Technomancer. That’s a Technomantic glove, you don’t ever mistake that shit for anything.

He fucked a mystic warrior-monk who can burn him to the ground with a snap of his fingers. Literally.

Everything makes sense now: the connectors, the undercut, the _metallised burns_ —how _didn’t_ he put it all together?

Because he was busy thinking about other things.

He wants to punch himself—but he thinks he might get punched right the fuck now.

‘I can hear you thinking over there,’ Roy murmurs, quiet but not quiet enough to be talking to himself. He dusts off the glove, pulls another from the inner pocket of his jacket, folds the jacket carefully on the stool. Looks at Tenacity, still holding _the damn gloves_ in his hand. Not putting them on, but that’s not a consolation at all.

‘Yeah,’ Tenacity croaks. Charity won’t ever be able to get rid of the stench of charred meat in this room. ‘Thinking.’

‘Care to share your thoughts, Tenacity Williams, the head-hunter?’

Oh fuck. He sits up, and thinks stupidly of putting on his clothes. As though that would save him. ‘You’re a ‘Mancer.’

Roy tilts his head. ‘So?’ His expression is guarded—but there is no rage there. Just… the same resignation, like before.

Oh fuck. Who the fuck did this to you. Let me line them up and shoot them all.

Tenacity licks his lips. ‘So. Shower?’

Roy puts the gloves down on top of his jacket. Slowly. Then smiles and nods. ‘Shower.’


End file.
